of mind as he grew up was different, and that he naturally thought his
judgment on the subject as good as that of the mother whom he had lost
at three years old, and could hardly be said to have known.'

But the true spiritual influence on Charles Dilke's early life was derived
from his grandfather, whose nature had in it much of the serenity and wise
happiness which go to the making of a saint. This influence was no doubt
ethical in its character rather than religious; but it can be traced, for
example, in a humane scruple which links it with Dilke's affectionate cult
of St. Francis of Assisi:

'In 1856 I had begun to shoot, my father being passionately fond of
the sport, and I suppose that few people ever shot more before they
were nineteen than I did. But about the time I went to Cambridge I
found the interference with my work considerable, and I also began to
have doubts as to considerations of cruelty, and on points affecting
the Game Laws, which led me to give up shooting, and from 1862 I
hardly ever shot at all, except, in travelling, for food.'

The taste for travel, always in search of knowledge, but followed with an
increasing delight in the quest, began for him in the rovings through
England with his grandfather. As early as his seventeenth year he was out
on the road by himself; and this letter written from Plymouth, April 5th,
1860 after a night spent at Exeter, indicates the results of his training:

"This morning we got up early, and went to the Northerny [Footnote:
Northernhay, or Northfield, a pleasure-ground at Exeter.] and
Cathedral. Nothing much. Took the train at quarter before ten. Railway
runs along the shore under the cliffs and in the cliffs. We saw a
rather large vessel wrecked on the sands. Teignmouth pretty. Got to